October 20th was the Pre-Event Workday that we have every year in preparation for the Community Tree Giveaway. With the help of some awesome volunteers, we tag each individual tree with a personalized identification tag and sort all of the trees by species and participant last name. This year, we had approximately 700 trees to sort and tag. Can you imagine how long that would take KDB’s tiny staff of three people? The Our volunteers were so amazing and kicked it into gear as soon as they arrived. What we had planned would take 4 hours, actually took 3! That’s how hard these individuals worked. We couldn’t do what we do without the help of our amazing volunteers!

This year we also piloted these custom-made tree boxes, made of old pallets taken to the landfill. The Solid Waste Dept. created these with the Tree Giveaway in mind, because the wind tends to blow our trees over before the event on Saturday. Since they on pallets, we were also able to move them with a fork lift! This was a major time-saver this year!

About a month ago, we launched My KDB Tree, a new urban forestry campaign. My KDB Tree is an initiative to track the health and progress of the more than 2,500 free trees KDB distributes to the Denton community each year. With this effort, KDB is collecting information on the survival rates, citywide distribution, and other data for trees given away through programs like the Community Tree Giveaway, NeighborWoods, and Children’s Arbor Day.

1) A Social Media/Online component that encourages KDB tree program participants to share pictures of their trees with us using the hashtag #MyKDBTreeon any social media platform.

2) An Online Questionnaire, the My KDB Tree Survey, to collect slightly more detailed information on tree health and planting locations. The survey is quick and easy, and the data collected is not used for any purpose other than tracking the health and distribution of our trees.

My KDB Tree is an ongoing effort. Please use the hashtag year-round to give us updates and share pictures of the trees you’ve received through a KDB program!

@lisa_oms says that “Jordan did a great job planting.” And from we can tell from this photo, we agree!

“This is a wonderful program. A big thank you for making Denton beautiful!”

“Thank you for providing information on planting trees to help increase rate of survival. This program is great! Thank you to the staff and volunteers.”

Ok, so this isn’t a picture of a tree, but we love that you guys love our Tree Giveaway shirt! Plus, @apacheroseprincess says “I proclaim my allegiance to the Tree-Loving Fraternity” so we thought this was worth sharing.

One more t-shirt picture. This one is from @Square205, the folks who helped us rebrand Tree Giveaway. “@kdbdenton was super awesome & hooked us up with some of the shirts we worked on for them!” No, you guys are awesome!